Ecko Rising (33 page)

“Ecko’ll come back,” she said. “He will.”

“Of course he will.” Pareus slapped her shoulder.

They both knew he was lying.

* * *

“Holy fucking shit!”

They were fast, flowing over remnants of shattered masonry. Ecko cursed the Bogeyman’s luck for not ensuring the wall had fallen
after
the fuckers had started running, but didn’t waste breath. His adrenals were fully kicked, the flood of heat and strength and elation slashed a grin across his face, made him turn. He picked up a sizeable lump of stone, flashed his targeters and turned the lead critter into a pink smear.

Its closest buddies paused. Their mistake – a hailstorm of savagely accurate, hard-thrown wreckage and the wave disintegrated into shrieking, boiling cannibalism.

He heard Tarvi, her shout loud across the plaza.

“Ecko! Ecko!”

As he turned, he saw the wave of critters hit the base of the patrol’s shambolic defence wall. Some went through, claws tearing holes in burned timber. He saw the spearmen, clumsy at close range, trying to jab down at the beasties as they flowed up the outside of the debris.

The first one crested the wall, parted its needle teeth and shrieked.

Ecko was still running. He saw the critter begin to sizzle, steam rising into the dust from supercooking flesh. He heard its shriek redouble, saw its scales crisp and flake, its skin slough from its sides. It was steaming from the eye sockets, still shrieking.

Then it shuddered and collapsed, tumbled sideways into the eager fangs of its mates.

Another crested the wall, another. They, too, flash-fried like Lugan’s fucking breakfast... Spearmen jabbed at them, shoving them away even as they burned.

One critter swarmed through a hole, dropped to the ground, another followed it. Another. Ecko watched as a spearman screamed and fell, hands beating at something ripping the calf muscle clean from the back of his leg. The other was in his face, ravening into his eye, its body curling in glee as its teeth tore. He was trying to scream, beat the thing off him, but it carved straight through the bone and into his skull, claws shredding the skin.

For a moment, his heels hammered the ground.

Then he was still.

Round where he’d fallen, there was chaos.

A heaving storm of the creatures fought to reach the downed patrolman, and turned on each other.

Pareus was yelling, his blade was fast, flicking the things from the wall top back into the oncoming slither.

The patrolman shot his last shaft into a creature that tumbled from the top of the wall – but one had got round behind him.

It sank its foreclaws into his leg and its teeth into the back of his knee. He stumbled, fell hard onto the bow and it shattered, splinters hitting his face and hands. The critter was still shredding. The fucking things were like piranhas, all teeth and ravenous, ripping hunger.

Piranhas.

“My tan perished round me. I escaped only because Rhan bore me home.”

Jesus.

With a sudden, flash memory of Roderick’s scar, Ecko went over the barricade.

His targeters flashed, his foot moved. The beast on the archer’s leg was sent smash into the wall behind them – but there were two more, three, four.

They were all over the last patrolman, claws raking huge gashes, teeth pulling chunks of flesh from his face and chest and arms. He flailed, got his hands on one and tried to yank it free but it was claws embedded and ripping out his throat and ear, his blood-matted hair was tangling round its legs.

He was trying to scream – but one was over his mouth, eating its way into his jaw.

Ecko took one long breath.

And exhaled.

The creatures roasted, shrieking, blackened and cracking, crisping scales. Beneath them, the archer gave one, shocked gasp. He inhaled flame and his face was just gone, the flesh of his shoulders cooked under charred wisps of fabric.

Ecko had been dreaming – he remembered...

Tarvi was staring at him, open-mouthed.

But Pareus gave a rallying cry, defiant and enraged. He was bleeding from gashes in his sword arm. As Ecko glanced, he slammed his boot down on another beast, smashing it against the broken stone.

There were too many of them.

Ecko saw another of the patrol go down, screaming, under a welter of sinew and scale. More and more of them were breaching the barricade. His targeters were half blinding him, tracking movement too fast to follow. A spearwoman fell and they were all over her. She struggled to sit up but they flowed up her back and into her hair. He heard her skull crack under the pressure of needle-sharp teeth.

The critters’ shrieks rose to a crescendo. Frenzied, they tore at each other in an effort to reach the prize.

“To me!” Pareus called again, but his patrol had been torn to pieces round him – there was almost no one left to hear his courage.

Ecko slammed a foot down on one, kicked another off the top of the wall – but they were still coming.

If he exhaled again, he’d empty the tanks – his little flamer was never meant to be used...

Fuck!

He snatched a lump of stone from the floor and slammed it down on the wall top, crushing the beasts to a smear.

In answer to Pareus’s cry, one of the shieldmen fell back, came to stand beside the commander, defend them both. Pareus’s flicker-fast blade was clearing the wall before him – between he and Ecko they were holding their side of the defence.

The other remaining shieldman unbuckled his shield and threw it from him, unable to bear the weight of the creatures upon it, claws fastened in the wood. He tried to rally, but they dragged him down, their ecstatic shrieks ripping the sky.

They flowed over him like a scaled death shroud, flashing with teeth and claws.

This is game-the-fuck over
, Ecko suddenly realised. Himself, Pareus, Tarvi, the white-faced shieldman...
We’re not getting out of this.

For just an instant, he was tempted to let it go.
Yeah, so I
fucked up, so what? It’s not like it matters. Reboot, let’s go again...

...then one of the critters swarmed under Pareus’s foot and closed on Tarvi; shreds of flesh still caught between its teeth.

She screamed, shrill and furious, as it ran up the front of her leg. Its teeth were bared, it grinned up at her.

Instinctively, the shieldman turned.

And they were on him.

Pareus cried horrified denial as if he’d never been so scared in his life. As his shout rose into the darkening air, the shieldman’s turn spiralled into a delicate slump, down onto to the stone.

The creatures had torn out his lower legs. They flowed upwards as he fell, raking his flesh, tearing muscle from bone, worrying at him like street dogs. Blood slashed the fire-damaged stone.

The shield hit the ground, spun for a moment, and lay still, Fhaveonic device glinting in the setting sun.

Holy shit.

Ecko had one shot at this.

“Get behind me,” he said.
“MOVE!”

Tarvi moved. Pareus was a split second too slow.

As the commander turned from the wall top, one threw itself at him, claws hooked in his cheek. Its weight dragged it downwards, slicing through soft skin, opening a second mouth in the side of the commander’s face. Dropping his sword, Pareus made a grab for it, but it hooked round him like a pet and ravened its teeth into his cheekbone.

His face splintered under the force of its jaws.

His eyes burning with pain, fury, outrage, he grabbed the thing and yanked it off him, taking half of his own face off with it. Bone shone white through a mask of gore.

There was another one on his feet, and another.

“Go,” he said. The word was barely recognisable. Astoundingly, he leaned down to pick up the sword and another one was on his wrist, his forearm. “Run! Now!”

Tarvi was over the gore-smattered wall where Ecko had cleared the route.

Ecko was going after her.

As soon as he’d done one last thing.

With a silent farewell to the commander, he exhaled his final breath of fire.

17: REDLOCK

                    
ROVIARATH

The man came out of the tavern to see three of them waiting for him.

It was raining, rattling on the mica and soaking into worn wooden walls, rivulets of dirt ran down the roadway.

He looked from face to face and said quietly, “Walk away.”

“Never happen.” The biggest of the three grinned. “You owe him – and you know it.”

The rain was warm on the man’s face. He rested his hands on the axeheads, shafts slung through twin rings at his belt.

“I owe him shit,” he said. “Now walk. Away.”

They went to grab him, force him up against the door.

With a thumb flick and a double rasp, both axes were free. The heads were real white-metal, glistening grey in the rain. One swift sidestep buried them in the ribcage of the first. The second hit the dirt when a tight, laced-up boot slammed into his groin.

The third, barely more than a lad, backed up, white faced, hands spread wide. The axeman planted his foot on the remnant of his attacker’s chest and yanked both axeheads free, dragging ribs and lungs out into the dirt. The man coughed, spluttered gore and died, his final gasp lost in the rain.

The roadway was turning to mud.

The second man lay on his side, knees up and hands clamped between his thighs. He was white to his lips, unable to stand.

“Next time,” the axeman said. “Walk away when I tell you.”

“Sure,” the lad mumbled. Carefully not looking at the corpse, not looking at it, he picked up his stricken mate, and the pair of them splashed away.

“Idiots.” Redlock wiped both axes on the dead guy’s breeches, kicked him clear of the tavern door, and went back to his goblet.

* * *

Three doorways down, Triqueta of the Banned watched everything.

Redlock had bootsteps that sent echoes through the grass – wherever he went, the Varchinde rippled at his presence. A curse of his reputation: he was an easy man to find.

The scrabbling sprawl of the Great Fayre spread around two thirds of Roviarath’s city wall. The other third, facing south and west, stood over the riverside – watching the point where the three tributaries of the Great Cemothen River met and merged. Here, the water was white and wild, but a skilled barge commander would know the route about the banks to reach the city’s huge stretch of wharf.

Many of the cargoes dropped here never made the city proper – they simply bled from the harbour’s edges straight into the Fayre, swelling it more with every return. Harsher than the marketplace, the harbour was savage and opportunistic; cruelty grew like salt whorls on the wood. Rumour muttered that the slave trade had also grown here – that those with no one to miss them would find themselves in the hands of the Kartian craftmasters, and that they would never see the light of day again.

But surely that was only rumour.

The Kartiah Mountains themselves seemed very close, here, huge and jagged dark. Rising harsh over the rattling planks of the harbourside, their great heads were too high to see, lost in the rain clouds. To the north and south, they folded gently into forested foothills, woven with a myriad streams. Here, they were like the wall that ended the world, fragmented into towering grey wind carvings. They were timeless, colossal and impossible stone creatures that stood silent guard over the plain.

Only the seedy stretch of the harbour’s tumbledown buildings defended the city from their dark might.

That – and Redlock.

In the returns since Triqueta had seen him, he hadn’t changed – his garments were loose, battered and patched, his distinctive hair tied in a warriors’ knot. He bore no wealth, no evidence of his birth-rank – just the axeheads, acid etched and wickedly hooked. The story went he’d taken them from some road-pirate lord.

He was still unarmoured, shockingly fast and hard hitting. Twin axes were an odd weapon choice – almost no defensive capability – but his brutal combat aggression was still as savage. He must be – what – forty-five returns? And there was no sign of his body slackening.

Skidding past her down the road, his two assailants were speaking in tones of awe.

“...Roken’ll do his nut!”

“Roken!” The younger of the two was still shaking. “I’m more scared of the Mad Axeman!”

His companion said darkly, “Looked pretty sane to me...”

Still muttering, they tucked themselves under the buildings’ overhang, grimaced at the weather, and continued onwards through the ribbon-town.

Triq waited until she could only hear the rain, then ducked out of the doorway and took a deep breath.

Told herself sternly she wasn’t nervous. Nope. Not at all.

Twisted in the muddy road, the corpse was already being picked over. The scavengers scuttled, hunched and dripping, out of her way.

She bounced up the step, shook her wet hair, creaked open the door. Waited for her desert eyes to adjust to the poor light.

Definitely not nervous.

Before her, the room was worn: trade-road dust permeated every corner, stirring lazily with the draught. As the door closed, it drifted to settle on knife-scored tables and benches, on scattered, silent drinkers and a dirty, spit-stained floor.

Redlock didn’t look up. He was alone, sat by the empty fireplace, bloodied and filthy boots on the table and cracked terhnwood goblet in hand. The sight of him sent a shock through her blood. She told herself sternly to ignore it. As her vision adjusted, she realised he looked older – more white lines at the corners of his eyes, more white threads through the knot of his hair.

But he was still Redlock, solid, practical, square shouldered; road-worn skin creased by boyish humour. The sight of him thrilled and buoyed her.

The lurker behind the bar grunted warily, eying her Banned leathers.

“Came too late to help, then?”

In the quiet room, the sentence was bright, brittle.

She defied embarrassment with a chuckle.